


Truth is a blessing

by JaqofSpades



Series: Through the Peephole [2]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: M/M, TSC Prompt 288, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:04:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5016577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a cold November night that sends her to the heavy armoire filled with pillows and blankets. Something catches her eye as she pulls the top blanket out, and she remembers her favourite book from childhood and smiles. A knot in the wood that looks like an eye.</p><p>A hole.</p><p>She doesn’t even stop to think before pressing her eye to it, but it’s not the snowy winter forest she’s half expecting to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth is a blessing

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Bass/Miles/Rachel fill for The Second Coming: claim 288 “Through the Peephole”, a prequel to “Love is a curse.”

“Mrs Matheson. Would you like to come with me? The General has suggested you might be more comfortable in the main wing,” the housekeeper suggests.

Rachel eyes her warily, and wonders exactly what comprises the “main wing”. The way Miles has been treating her, it could be a goddamn dungeon. He’d been fine at first, hugging her close and whispering his thanks that they’d finally, _finally_ chosen to do the right thing.

Then he’d looked around for Ben and the kids, and had the hide to look disappointed when he realised they weren’t with her. “They’ll be joining us soon, right?”

No, she had told him. They wouldn’t. She had sacrificed herself in the hope that now, Bass and Miles would leave them alone. She would tell them what she knew – what she and Ben knew – about the power, and then they’d let her go home to her family.

(She knows, deep down, that will never happen. Miles has spent too many years waiting for her to see her walk away. They can pretend all they like it’s about the power, but … she knows the truth.)

She feels the truth gnawing at her bones when she sits across from him at the dining table, and sees it shimmering in his eyes when he asks about Danny or Charlie. Asks how she could have left them, dark eyes pensive. Guilty.

Sometimes she drops Ben’s name into the conversation just to make him flinch, and if she takes a little satisfaction from that flush of jealousy, so be it. And perhaps there had been moments of weakness, where her need for comfort outweighed her distaste for their brutal regime. But there is no comfort left in him, no tenderness, she discovers, when he tells her to return to her own room.

She told herself she was grateful, afterwards, and had tried to thank him for his restraint with a kiss on the cheek. Miles had patted her on the back awkwardly, obviously wanting to pull her into a hug, but then Bass makes some comment about the Militia that sends Miles scurrying.

“I’m sorry, Rachel, but afraid he’s my General first,” he apologises, but there’s frost behind his dazzling smile.

She studies him for a second, poised on the edge of figuring something out, but then the briefings start and his attention is dragged away. Rachel has a standing invitation to sit in – her expertise is welcome everywhere – but she refuses to be complicit in their sins.

So is this punishment or a reward?

Or a change of heart on Miles part, her heart hammers as she realises where she is being taken. The main wing, she realises, is the one that houses the private quarters of both the General and the President; unlike much of Independence Hall, it has been completely refurbished.

Monroe lives in one set of rooms, and Miles in another across the hall. She doesn’t get a suite, but the room is luxurious enough, straight across the hall from Miles.   Next to Bass.

She wrinkles her nose at the thought, hoping the walls are thick enough to protect her from the sound of Bass and his paramors. She’d heard stories of a wife that had died, but she’s only ever known the womaniser, and the easy charm he uses to deflect all the party girls and brazen military wives suggests vast amounts of practice.

But all she ever hears is the low hum of voices in the room next door.

It’s a cold November night that sends her to the heavy armoire filled with pillows and blankets. Something catches her eye as she pulls the top blanket out, and she remembers her favourite book from childhood and smiles. A knot in the wood that looks like an eye.

A hole.

She doesn’t even stop to think before pressing her eye to it, but it’s not the snowy winter forest she’s half expecting to see.

It’s the pale expanse of a long, bony back, weight on his elbows as he leans back onto the bed, dark head thrown back and hips bucking upwards into someone mostly hidden by the position between his knees. Miles is panting quietly, gnawing at his lip and swallowing most of the noise, but his moans get louder as his movements are become increasingly disjointed.

When he finally comes, he barks a familiar name, but it seems so strange, so wrong, she doesn’t listen. Keeps watching, a sneer already twisting her face, but her hand between her legs anyway. She’s worrying her clit frantically when the blonde curls emerge, and dancing blue eyes beneath them. Bass.

He’s smirking as he climbs up on the bed, ostentatiously licking his lips, saying crude, dreadful things it makes her retch to hear.

“Love your cock,” and “gonna fuck you now,” and “make some noise so the bitch knows you’re mine.”

Truth is a blessing, she tells herself, and places the first bricks in the wall. Had he ever really loved her, she aches, or was she only ever an amusement while he waited for Bass? When he told her to go back to Ben, that he couldn’t do that to his brother, was this what he really meant? Had it been him, not her, who had made a choice?

Each question takes a bite of her soul, but truth is a blessing, she insists, necessary, even when it burns and bites and scars like a curse.

_fin_


End file.
